Izard County Sheriff's Department currently has tworescue boats and a dive equipment trailer to fill the needs of the county for search and rescue. Izard County Sheriff's Department has five certified divers who can handle body recovery out of rivers and lakes as well as evidence retrieval. The deputies are trained in several different aspects.

We are capable to do the following tasks:

· Scuba diving

· Swift water rescue

· High angle rescue

·Woodland search

Izard County Sheriff's Department Search and Rescue has added a couple of items into the rescue and recovery.

The first item added is a drone that can be flown by remote control to help in the location of missing people or fugitives running from authorities. The idea is to be able to deploy the drone to start an aerial observation before a helicopter is able to arrive on scene. We currently have 75 minutes of battery and a flying radius of 5 miles, we can take photos of locations as well as have live video feed. The drone also has a GPS that will give us location of items or person.

The second is for our boat, it is a Helix 12 sonar system that we will use in operations where we need to recovery items on the bottom of the lake or river. The Helix 12 has a nice high definition 12” screen that will allow the user to see and identify objects in the water.

On September 25th 2006 is a county search and rescue team was called upon by neighboring county to assist in swift water rescue of 19 people who were in life-threatening position on the flooded Spring River in Hardy. Izard County search and rescue was able to rescue 11 out of the 19 people.